


remember me, love, when i'm reborn

by elytheia



Category: Original Work
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-09
Updated: 2019-12-09
Packaged: 2021-02-26 02:15:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,634
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21735922
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elytheia/pseuds/elytheia
Summary: The music is beating in his bones, his bloodstream, coursing through his limbs and bonding him to the rest of the crowd, making him an unmistakable part of this night, a stitch in the quilt of the club. If someone looked at the scene they wouldn't be able to distinguish Andrej Majewski, seventeen year old, trying to fit in desperately, no, they would only see bodies and hands and hips, all blended in a wonderful chaos.The thought thrills Andrej.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 1





	1. the point at which you looked at me

Andrej meets Arsinoe at 17. They're both at a bar, some dingy place near Kiev's slums, and Andrej's feeling brave. This is not his first rebellion but the excitement never wears down; sneaking out of the window while his sister and mother sleep on, passing dark alleyways and darker corners with a novel lightness in his steps, entering the bar - the bouncer not even glancing his way - it's all a part of the thrill. He knows, deep down, he should feel bad. Guilty, for leaving his sister, his responsibilities behind but he can't find it in himself to feel bad; he says to himself, just one night. Just one night and I'll go back. And he does, but it is never the last time like he promises to himself. Each morning after the secret night outs his sister looks at him with a knowing look in her eyes that he ignores. They'll have a conversation about it sometime, he knows, when their mother is wasted (again) and they're sitting together in front of the heater, trying to warm each other (again). But until then, Andrej will get whatever he can.

Andrej passes the gate with a nod to the bouncer, who doesn't bother to acknowledge him, a clearly under age boy, and continues to stare at the men scuffling near the club. The club is loud and dark, a musty smell hanging in the air that is kind of being subdued by the perfumes and colognes worn by the club goers but never completely vanishing, a constant presence - it is a familiar smell, making Andrej's tense body relax and give into music. He knows his pattern. He goes to the bar, orders the cheapest alcoholic drink he can get and settles into a barstool - which is a quite feat, considering the stool's designed solely to make humans uncomfortable. He sips at his drink, welcoming the burn that goes through his throat and tries to feel old. I should be used to this, he says to himself while looking at himself on the mirror behind the bartender. He doesn't know who he is trying to convince. It clearly isn't himself - he looks awkward, with his newly overgrown limbs and odd posture. His clothes are mismatched but at least they're not cheap looking, despite being bought from the bazaar. He looks like an eccentric kid who ended up in the wrong place. He takes another sip. He avoids his eyes on the mirror.

He doesn't know for how long he stays there, trying to make his drink last; the money in his pocket feels heavy enough to draw him to the floor, to the center of the earth. _His_ money he earned while serving as a busboy at Volska, the equally dingy diner around his house that was always empty but somehow never in the threat of bankruptcy; Andrej and the other waitress Masha had come to the conclusion of it being used to launder money, which was a more common occurrence than you would think. He doesn't dwell on the thoughts this entails and instead turns to the shifting dance floor filled with desperate people and an omnipresent smell of sweat, not going away despite the hum of air conditioner that works above the ceiling. He came here to forget his own life and miseries, not to just sit and drink. He can do that without coming to the bar, with Pyotr and his buddies behind the school. Andrej's going to make this night count.

He finishes his drink and jumps down from the barstool. The movement makes him feel like a child hopping down from an adult sized chair. (It's not that far off, actually, even if he wouldn't admit it to himself - he _is_ a child, in body and soul.) Making his way to the dance floor is both surprisingly easy and predictably hard, between the sweaty bodies moving and wiggling. The music is beating in his bones, his bloodstream, coursing through his limbs and bonding him to the rest of the crowd, making him an unmistakable part of this night, a stitch in the quilt of the club. If someone looked at the scene they wouldn't be able to distinguish Andrej Majewski, seventeen year old, trying to fit in desperately, no, they would only see bodies and hands and hips, all blended in a wonderful chaos. The thought thrills Andrej. A girl takes his arm and spins him, laughing loudly. He grins in return, the lights coloring his teeth a neon pink.

They dance. At one point, the girl leaves and a man in his early twenties takes her place, not really looking at him but not looking away from him either. Andrej doesn't think it's about him; the man, like him, is here to lose himself. Individuality is in the second plan, now. Andrej laughs when the man tries to do a dance move he doesn't recognize and fails spectacularly, throwing a sheepish grin at Andrej's direction.

After a few minutes, or maybe years, Andrej decides he's had enough. He pulls away from the girl with blue highlights in her hair, and dances around people on his way to the bar. The bar is more crowded than when he had came in before, but he still manages to find a stool near the toilets. The sounds coming from the nearby corridors are barely audible under the deep resonating bass of the club, but now and then choked off cries sneaks up between the bass drops. To Andrej it is background noise, like laughter and occasional screams that you become accustomed to when you live a life like Andrej's. That's Kiev for you. At least these parts of town, where everything is possible and usually is happening, too, somewhere not far away.

He's so deep in his second (and last, if going by the money that sits in his pocket) drink that he doesn't realize someone's watching him until a very deliberate cough, coming from his side. Andrej almost shits himself, he's not afraid to admit. When he manages to breathe after nearly choking on his cheap vodka, he turns readily to kill whoever interrupted his drink-

and is put back to his place by a pair of ice blue eyes, staring at him with an indescribable look. A girl, around the same age as him, is sitting next to him. Her slender fingers hold a glass delicately, like you would hold a withering rose, although Andrej guesses a glass is also delicate, but looks like she could throw it and kill a man at any given moment. Andrej finds that quality attractive, surprising himself - he never thought he had a type until now, but apparently pretty people with dangerous auras are a check on his list. Under the lights of the club, she looks ethereal - her black turtleneck is painted blue and pink, tight pants equally dark and unassuming. Everything is unassuming about her, like someone tried to make her plain and failed obtrusively. She watches him watch her, then her lips quirk a little; the first emotion she showed since making her presence known. When she speaks, something about her accent bothers Andrej. "You dance terribly," she says. "it was painful to watch."

"Maybe you should show me how it's done, then." Andrej says automatically. When his brain is offline (and it is, for the most part) his mouth tends to run off on its own. Usually something flirty, almost always followed by an eye-roll or a nervous laugh; although he was getting better at controlling his responses. It's just... Talking to really pretty girls did something to his impulse control. Andrej didn't think he could be blamed.

The girl narrows her eyes not unlike a cat, content in her place but still curious about the mouse hurrying under her gaze, afraid and brave at the same time. Andrej, like the mouse in this euphemism, is also feeling brave, because he is not Andrej, or Andre, or Andryusha, he's just a boy. The anonymity excites him to a point that he forgoes any precaution he might have had and leans in, almost daring her to give up, to give in. "Or do you prefer to show it in somewhere private?"

A sudden laugh startles him, and it takes him a few seconds to realize the laugh came from her. It is gone as soon as it appears, a clear shot in the sky, the only evidence left behind being the slight smirk around the corner of her red mouth. He feels like he should be offended as he is the one being mocked but he is impossibly charmed, and finds himself wanting to make her laugh again, to hear that sharp mocking sound and have it echo forever, each time cutting into him deeper than before. It's dramatic, and he knows he's being dramatic, but the emotion has already gotten hold of him and is refusing to let go, so he goes along with it.

"You couldn't handle me if you tried," she says, a cold smile evident in her words.

Andrej stares at her a bit, and she allows it, probably thinking he's admiring her even more. And he is, don't get him wrong - he's a teenager after all - but there's something more important than gazing at her with hearts in his eyes.

"Where are you from?" he asks, confused. Because at first he had assumed she was from Pravyi Bereh, the contained poshness of her accent leading him to this conclusion, but her choice of words are unusual. To a careless listener it was impossible to notice but Andrej was nothing if not attentive to details. Details made him. And, apparently, details unmade her.

To her credit, her face doesn't move a muscle to give her away. The only tell of hers is the slight twitch of her pinky finger, still wrapped around her glass. "What do you mean?" she replies.

"I mean, you're not Ukrainian. Right?" he adds, although he isn't waiting for an answer. "No one uses _vesti_. I thought that was a dialect thing but..." he shrugs.

The girl's brows furrow. She looks at him, contemplating, then nods. Andrej feels like he just ruined the moment, despite the moment never having existed. He tries to salvage the situation by rambling, "Don't get me wrong, your Ukrainian is perfect, it's just, most Russians don't come here, i mean Troieschyna isn't exactly a tourist trap-"

She holds her hand up and Andrej trails off. "It's okay." she says, tilts her head to the side. She has that pensive look again, her eyes taking him in more thoroughly than when they had met before, almost trying to find something. What, Andrej doesn't have a clue. After a few seconds of tense staring, she nods again, seemingly mostly to herself. "Arsinoe." she says as if it's an explanation. And it is, Andrej realizes delightedly.

"Andrej," he rushes, tripping over his one word answer in haste not to leave her hanging.

Arsinoe doesn't quite smile but has a look on her face that says if she was a smiling person, she would be grinning right now, some sort of a Cheshire cat that has gotten what she wanted. "Nice to meet you, Andrej."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i don't know jack shit about ukraine and ukrainian i'm just winging it. sorry


	2. now my mind is in a whirl

Andrej usually has a hard time remembering the night outs he has, especially if he has drunk, but he finds himself seeing a pair of blue eyes everywhere he goes; reflected in the shop windows, looking at him behind the mirror at the foyer, perhaps amidst the loud crowd of Liskivska street, boring into his. It is unusual, he will admit to himself this much, because not much happened that night to be this impressed: he and Arsinoe talked a while, Andrej doing most of the talking since Arsinoe was kind of a closed box, only saying a word or two when it became apparent Andrej would lead the subject into much different paths than it was intended in his intoxicated (not just from the vodka) state such as finding himself rambling about the cow prices in Myshalivka ("You see, my friend there, Maksim, goes to the marketplace and sees this cow, and this cow, which is like- is like- [incoherent muttering] a behemoth! that rolls around in hay and Maksim, my dear friend, says to the owner, how much are y-" "Andrej?" "I- Yeah?" "You were talking about the Kushnir gang." "Oh, yes, of course. As I was saying, they are mostly harmless but...") and sometimes derailing the entire conversation by stopping to stare at the disco ball which didn't really shine anymore, just hung out limply from the ceiling. Arsinoe was patient to his lack of attention which was emphasized by the alcohol he continued to consume, courtesy of Arsinoe with her apparently bottomless bank account. At one point, Andrej remembered Arsinoe was Russian, or at least spoke Russian, and offered to switch the language so they both could converse easier -in his mind, the lack of words the girl offered was due to a linguistic barrier, despite her blatant ease at understanding an incoherent Andrej- but Arsinoe refused, saying this was a good practice for her. Andrej was only happy to oblige.

At the end of the night, Arsinoe scribbled something on his arm before touching his cheek and leaving. "I'll talk to you soon," she said over her shoulder, so out-of-a-dream looking that Andrej could convince himself that it all had been a mirage if not for the numbers scratched on his arm. Then she was gone. Andrej stood there for a while, then couldn't find it in himself to finish his drink (he didn't feel bad. Wasn't his money, after all.) so he lingered a few minutes before getting up and leaving, too.

He doesn't remember walking the streets necessary to get to home but he must have, because the next thing he remembers is waking up to his sister's incessant yelling through the hallway.

"I'm coming, Jesus, keep your voice down!" he yells back as is expected from him, then groans. He always forgets about the headaches, not to mention the hangover. He's rubbing his face with his hands for at least five minutes when Irina opens the door without any warning at throws a pillow right into his face. "Rise and shine, fuckface."

"Sit on a cactus and die, assmidget."

Irina smirks. "I love your hangover insults. You actually become creative."

"Fuck you."

Irina hums, then settles on the end of the bed. The sunlight comes behind her from the open window (so that's where the cold comes from, Andrej thinks absently) so it's kind of hard to distinguish her face but Andrej can see the exhaustion settled in the lines of her face. It makes her look older than she is, almost like a big sister of him instead of the baby she is, only fifteen and still growing. Her blonde hair is nestled in the crook of her neck and reaching almost to her elbow, near the nightgown she stole from their mother's drawer in an attempt to get her attention. (She had never even realized. Andrej remembers holding on to a crying Irina and feeling hollow, feeling laden.) When Andrej doesn't say anything, Irina frowns. Her gaze searches something on his face, then his yesterday's clothes and seems to come to a conclusion that doesn't appease her.

Andrej waits for her to say something, anything. It's kind of like a game of chicken, to see who's going to break first, who will give in and break the unspoken pact between them. But Irina remains silent, only shaking her head and standing up from the bed. "Go prepare the breakfast," she says. When she leaves, the door is left ajar.

Andrej sighs, then stands up to follow her.


End file.
